After Dark eBook

my literary offspring. The little children of
my brain may be weakly enough, and may be sadly in
want of a helping hand to aid them in their first attempts
at walking on the stage of this great world; but,
at any rate, they are not borrowed children.
The members of my own literary family are indeed increasing
so fast as to render the very idea of borrowing quite
out of the question, and to suggest serious apprehension
that I may not have done adding to the large book-population,
on my own sole responsibility, even yet.

AFTER DARK.

LeavesfromLeah’sdiary.

26th February, 1827.—­The doctor has just
called for the third time to examine my husband’s
eyes. Thank God, there is no fear at present
of my poor William losing his sight, provided he can
be prevailed on to attend rigidly to the medical instructions
for preserving it. These instructions, which
forbid him to exercise his profession for the next
six months at least, are, in our case, very hard to
follow. They will but too probably sentence us
to poverty, perhaps to actual want; but they must be
borne resignedly, and even thankfully, seeing that
my husband’s forced cessation from work will
save him from the dreadful affliction of loss of sight.
I think I can answer for my own cheerfulness and endurance,
now that we know the worst. Can I answer for our
children also? Surely I can, when there are only
two of them. It is a sad confession to make,
but now, for the first time since my marriage, I feel
thankful that we have no more.

17th.—­A dread came over me last night,
after I had comforted William as well as I could about
the future, and had heard him fall off to sleep, that
the doctor had not told us the worst. Medical
men do sometimes deceive their patients, from what
has always seemed to me to be misdirected kindness
of heart. The mere suspicion that I had been
trifled with on the subject of my husband’s
illness, caused me such uneasiness, that I made an
excuse to get out, and went in secret to the doctor.
Fortunately, I found him at home, and in three words
I confessed to him the object of my visit.

He smiled, and said I might make myself easy; he had
told us the worst.

“And that worst,” I said, to make certain,
“is, that for the next six months my husband
must allow his eyes to have the most perfect repose?”

“Exactly,” the doctor answered. “Mind,
I don’t say that he may not dispense with his
green shade, indoors, for an hour or two at a time,
as the inflammation gets subdued. But I do most
positively repeat that he must not employ his
eyes. He must not touch a brush or pencil; he
must not think of taking another likeness, on any
consideration whatever, for the next six months.
His persisting in finishing those two portraits, at
the time when his eyes first began to fail, was the
real cause of all the bad symptoms that we have had
to combat ever since. I warned him (if you remember,
Mrs. Kerby?) when he first came to practice in our
neighborhood.”